2.3 Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm?

Explore a real mystery this week in our mini-sode ‘Who Put Bella in the Wych Elm’

The Crime

On the 18th April 1943, four boys poaching wild birds eggs in Hagley Wood make a gruesome discovery; a human skull inside the hollow of a sprawling Wych Elm. Although they agree to keep the secret, a fit of guilt overtakes one of the boys and he confesses to his parents, who promptly take him to the police.

Following his instructions on the location of the elm, which is well concealed in a coppice, the investigating constables find not just a skull but a whole skeleton - minus one hand, located in a field nearby.

A coroner determines the victim is a woman, no more than five feet tall, who was likely smothered to death and her body squeezed into the hollow before it grew too stiff. She had likely died in the autumn of 1941, some two years previously. But despite the skull and dental records, there were missing persons reports or matched records.

With little information and amongst the confusion of the war efforts, the case is marked unsolved and set aside. Until a message appears…

The Graffiti

“WHO PUT LUBELLA DOWN THE WYCH ELM?”

Scrawled on a wall on Hyden Hill Road in 1944, to high to be written by a child, the message relaunches efforts to find this mysterious ‘Lubella’. And soon more graffiti appears, all over Hagley Wood, shortening to ‘Who put Bella in the wych elm?’

The Theories:

A number of theories sprang up, the first, and most likely, matches to a police report of a missing sex worker made in 1944 known as Bella who had vanished at least three years previously.

The second, now proven false, maintained that the woman was a Nazi spy parachuted into England.

However, the severed hand provides our spookiest theory; witchcraft. Perhaps Bella was the victim of an attempt to make a hand of glory in a ritualistic murder that linked to a crime in nearby Lower Quinton in 1945.

Unfortunately no investigations so far have proved conclusive. With both the victim and the crime still a mystery, all that remains is the question: Who put Bella in the wych elm?